


The Harder They Fall

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [26]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt Bruce Banner, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, and by "post" i really do mean right after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27208033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: "If it's all the same to you," Loki said, propping himself up. "I think I'll have that drink now."That's when Natasha looked up, her face immediately creasing. "Uh, guys—”Tony turned around just in time to see the Hulk shaking his head violently, a low growl coming from his throat as he staggered backward.The Hulk’s fists clenched tightly—and then he turned tail and leaped through the window, further shattering the already-shattered glass.Tony sighed. "Well, don't everyone move at once."
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark
Series: October 2020 Prompts [26]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 4
Kudos: 46





	The Harder They Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Day 26, for the prompt "migraine"
> 
> (A chunk of the dialogue in the beginning is taken from the 2012 Avengers and Avengers: Endgame scripts, btw)

“If it’s all the same to you,” Loki said, propping himself up. “I think I’ll have that drink now.”

From behind Tony, the Hulk gave a loud snort. Clearly, the big guy wasn’t buying it, and to be honest, neither was Tony. Loki might’ve been looking a bit worse for wear after his Hulk-smashing, but it wasn’t so easy to forget that his alien army had just destroyed most of the city.

“All right, get him on his feet,” Tony said abruptly. “We can all stand around posing up a storm later.”

From down in front, Clint slid his bow back and stood in one natural movement; just as Thor stepped forward, his cape temporarily blocking Natasha from view as he leaned down to grab Loki’s shoulder. Steve was wandering away with his hand to his ear, apparently listening to someone on his coms. As for the Hulk, he seemed quite content to stand there and watch the proceedings, a far cry from the rage-filled wrecking ball he’d been earlier. 

Not that his Tower needed any more wrecking.

“By the way, feel free to help clean up,” he added, glancing around meaningfully. Everyone else ignored that part, and he couldn’t really blame them. It had been a long… had it really only been two days? Damn. No wonder his mouth was running on autopilot.

Natasha took a few steps, her death grip on the scepter now relaxed. “Who gets the, uh, magic wand?”

 _Well, if it’s up for grabs—_ Tony thought, and he could see Thor’s gaze flick to it as well, but Steve chose that moment to spin around, hand still to his ear and frowning at the rest of them like they were interrupting _very important information._

“STRIKE team’s coming to secure it.”

Someone really needed to take away S.H.I.E.L.D.’s acronym privileges.

As if on cue, the elevator doors opened and a squad of what Tony could only assume was the STRIKE team walked in, carrying two large briefcases—and three guesses what _those_ were meant for.

Tony let the suit unlock itself from all around him and stepped out, the aches from getting thrown around inside a metal cocoon all day making themselves known at last as his feet touched the floor. He winced as he took in the suit’s appearance from the outside—after being blended around in the helicarrier’s engine blades and then going through a literal battle, it actually looked worse than Tony felt, which was something.

“We can take that off your hands,” one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents—a forgettable-looking one with glasses—was saying, holding out his arms as Natasha deposited the scepter into them.

“By all means,” she said. Natasha turned to the bar, where Clint was already pouring her a glass (and funny, Tony didn’t remember offering _them_ drinks, but at this point he was too worn out to care). “Careful with that thing.”

“Unless you want your mind erased,” Clint added. “And not the fun way.” Now that the archer was definitely out from under Loki’s spell, he seemed to be taking the whole thing surprisingly in stride. Then again, Tony didn’t really know the guy. Maybe his resting face was just like that.

“We promise to be careful,” the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent assured them. _Hmm, wouldn’t bet on that._

And then Steve was there, shoving past Thor and Loki and heading straight for the door. He didn’t make eye contact with any of them as he spoke to whoever was on the other end of that earpiece. “On my way down to coordinate search and rescue.”

Suddenly Tony was looking at two Captain Americas, which was… unsettling, and he was pretty sure he’d had a trippy dream about this once.

“‘ _On my way down to coordinate search and rescue_ ,’” Loki repeated, turning back to himself with a green flash. “I mean, honestly! How do you think you’ll be—”

Thor, who was suddenly looking every inch of his numerous centuries, dug something out of a pocket and clapped it onto Loki’s mouth. The little device expanded to snap around Loki’s face like a muzzle. “Shut. Up.”

_Has he been carrying that around this whole time?_

Tony still couldn’t help but smirk at the taken-aback look on Loki’s face. Loki didn’t even protest as Thor gave him a shove toward the door, right through the group of milling agents who were just finishing packing up and who didn’t seem at all concerned about the two Asgardians in their midst.

That’s when Natasha looked up from her drink, her face immediately creasing. “Uh, guys—”

Tony turned around just in time to see the Hulk shaking his head violently, like he was trying to dislodge something, a low growl coming from his throat as he staggered backward.

The Hulk’s fists clenched tightly, huge green eyes sweeping around the room without seeing it, and then he turned tail and leaped through the window, further shattering the already-shattered glass.

Tony honestly, sincerely, genuinely didn’t know how to react for a solid four seconds.

Apparently, neither did anyone else—except Loki, whose eyes were sparkling even as the mask covered his obvious grin. Thor frowned, his hand clamped onto Loki’s shoulder as he halfheartedly raised his hammer about two inches. Steve had turned around at the noise, paused half a step away from the door as the agents around him followed his gaze. Natasha was tensed and ready to move, but where was there to go?

And then Clint took another sip of his drink with a little “geh” sound, still leaning up against the bar and evidently deciding that whatever other shit this day was going to throw at them, he didn’t plan on being the one to handle it.

Tony sighed. “Well, don’t everyone move at once.”

Apparently that was enough to snap Steve out of it. “The collateral damage is going to—”

“I know, I know, don’t get your spandex in a twist.” Tony was already climbing back into the suit. “Listen, how about you handle whatever it is you’re handling—”

“Search and rescue.”

“—right, because I didn’t catch that the first—never mind, do that, and keep an eye on the megalomaniac while I’m gone, will you?” Tony jerked his head at Loki, and Thor muttered something that sounded like “Trust me, we will.”

“Great.” Tony strode over to the window and jumped out into the air, letting himself fall backward as he couldn’t resist giving a wave to the rest of them. He was pretty sure he saw Steve rolling his eyes.

Normally, to find an escaped Hulk, he would say to follow the trail of destruction; but as he flew off above the streets, it became more and more apparent that almost _everything_ had been destroyed. Collapsed buildings, upended cars, unchecked fires catching in windows, glass and concrete and metal spilled all over the street. 

He did his best to fix some of the small things he came across—an abandoned taxi hanging halfway off a bridge, one of the discarded Chitauri weapons glowing ominously in front of a burning pile of blown-away cardboard boxes, a pole that was listing just _slightly_ too far to one side—but the more he did fix, the more broken things seemed to appear like pictures in a pop-up book, and he eventually had to lift off again once he caught his breath starting to speed up.

 _Oh god this is real—this is an actual_ city _—this is_ my _city—_

“Hey, Jarvis, you there?” Tony finally asked, shoving those pesky thoughts aside. His helmet had been gently used—by which he meant that Thor had ripped the entire front of his faceplate off when he thought Tony was dead—and the suit in general had been so beat up that it was a miracle he was still in the air. 

Well, a miracle and Tony Stark engineering.

JARVIS’s voice replied instantly, and Tony calmed down a little just at the familiarity of it. “You have seven hundred and forty-three messages, sir.”

“You could at least start with a friendly greeting, J.”

“Allow me to start again: seven hundred and forty-seven.”

There was a definite edge to the AI’s tone, and Tony made a face. “This is about the whole flying into a—” _a wormhole a wormhole a wormhole_ “—into space thing, isn’t it? Because believe me when I say that I am _not_ planning to do that again.”

He flew through a gap between two buildings, still keeping his eyes peeled for anything large and green.

“Next time a missile’s coming for New York, I’ll have some kind of giant energy-reactive catapult installed on the roof,” he continued. “I don’t _want_ to sacrifice myself every time, you know—they’re onto something when they say the future is automated.”

JARVIS was silent for a moment, giving Tony time to wonder why he’d designed his artificial intelligence to be so damn intelligent before he finally spoke. “Would you like me to input the gamma sensors now, sir?”

Tony’s mouth curved up. “Please and thank you.” 

It was a good thing he’d spent the last day and a half doing so much radiation tracking with the tesseract—all that cramming of thermonuclear astrophysics really paid off—because hardly a minute had passed before JARVIS was saying, “Successfully completed,” and he had a location locked down.

He changed course from his aimless circling, heading in the direction that happened to be close to the building where he’d dropped Barton off on a roof earlier. Already it seemed like that had happened days ago.

Once he got close enough, it wasn’t hard to spot a huge green behemoth collapsed in a crater of bricks and cracked pavement, and he landed carefully a fair distance away. He’d never seen the Hulk look so still before, so—

As he took a step closer, the joints of his battered suit complaining, the Hulk slowly began to shrink.

None of the clips had ever shown the actual process of transformation, only the rampaging aftermath—he hadn’t even _seen_ the time on the helicarrier, although he’d heard plenty over the coms—and he couldn’t deny that this was something he’d been dying to witness in person. Tony watched in fascination as the color leached from skin and the muscles withdrew until there was only a pale scientist unconscious in the rubble.

Without thinking about it, Tony let himself out of the suit again, picking his way through the pile of wreckage until he found a relatively flat spot to kneel down beside Bruce. Even then, there were still sharp edges poking through his jeans, and he felt a pang of sympathy for Bruce, who was sprawled out completely in the rubble and entirely unable to do anything about it.

He didn’t want to wake Bruce up—the poor guy looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, and boy, did Tony know the feeling—but something told him that Bruce would prefer being woken up to being left alone in a pile of what used to be street and building.

Tony reached out a hand that barely brushed Bruce’s shoulder. “Bruce.”

He’d spoken softly, but Bruce’s eyes snapped open and he jumped away, scrambling backwards with his instincts set to “flight” before he was even fully awake.

“Hey, hey, whoa, calm down.” Words spit themselves out of Tony’s mouth as he pulled his hand back. “You know me, Banner, come on.”

Bruce blinked, and the wild look in his eyes faded back a bit. One of his hands was still braced behind him as though he were about to push himself to his feet and run, and he’d drawn his knees up close to his chest. “Tony.”

His voice rasped badly, and Tony winced, but Bruce didn’t seem to notice. His gaze had shifted from Tony’s face to staring up at the buildings around him, at the clear blue sky that not too long ago had been filled with fighting and explosions and spaceships full of—

_Shut up, me._

“Is it over?” Bruce finally asked. “Did we—” He stopped to cough out some dust from the surrounding wreckage, lasting a little longer than Tony thought was strictly normal, but already he was talking again through the hoarseness. “Did we win? That—that big alien whale thing…”

“Completely Hulk-smashed,” Tony promised. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows, and it was impressive how judgmental he could look while sitting naked in a pile of bricks.

“Okay, maybe that specific thing, we could’ve done without you—or Blondie could have, at least—but the rest of it? I mean, you legit did save my life; I wouldn’t be standing here if you didn’t catch me.” Tony gestured around vaguely. “And none of this would be standing here if I didn’t ride a nuke into space, and aliens would still be coming out of that portal if Romanoff didn’t stab it, and Loki would still be scheming around the place if Thor didn’t show up, and Rogers and Barton… well, I’m sure they did something. You get what I’m saying, though, right? It’s like it all comes full circle. Anyway, though, we did win. Aliens are gone, city saved, crisis averted, Avengers assembled.” Tony paused. “We have _got_ to workshop that name, by the way.”

Bruce looked overwhelmed, but he managed to nod. “So, where…”

“They’re back at my place, cleaning up.”

“Then shouldn't we get back there?”

“Yeah, probably.”

The two of them stood up at the same moment; the only difference was that Bruce immediately started swaying. Tony reached out belatedly, but Bruce was already stumbling back down until he was on his knees, his palms bracing him up.

The sudden motion shuddered more coughs out of him, and Tony instinctively glanced away because he was pretty sure Bruce didn’t want him, a practical stranger, seeing him as vulnerable as that.

But then Bruce’s coughs grew more and more desperate, and then he was throwing up onto the cracked pavement.

Now Tony _really_ didn’t know what to do. “Oh. Oh, okay, man. I’ll just… give you a minute.”

Bruce took a shaky breath, wiping his hand over his mouth as he turned around. He really did look pale, and it wasn’t just in comparison to the vivid green. “Sorry about that. I just…” His face twisted and he pressed his hands to his forehead. “Ack.”

His voice hitched on that last syllable, and he coughed again, but only once this time, and Tony decided it was safe to put a nice reassuring hand on his shoulder (A nice reassuring hand that would hopefully also keep him from face-planting into the bricks and concrete).

Tony almost jerked his hand away as soon as it made contact with Bruce’s skin. “Yikes, you are _burning_ up. You didn’t pick something up when you were out Missing In Anger, did you?”

Bruce blinked at him. His curls were sweaty against his forehead. “No… I can’t get sick, not with the Other Guy.”

“Then, uh—”

“It’s a physical thing, the changing, you know? It has its—effects. And I haven’t transformed in over a year, and now twice in one day.” Bruce offered a tired sort of smile that faded almost instantly. “Not spectacular planning on my part.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Tony offered an arm. “Need a hand getting back to the Tower?”

“Maybe?” Bruce corrected himself with a little sigh. “Probably.”

As it turned out, Bruce was just the right amount of exhausted that he could manage the slow steps down the street while leaning heavily against Tony’s shoulder. Tony scooped up his suit as they passed by—fortunately, said suit was already collapsed into suitcase form, so he didn’t end up getting dragged down to the pavement—and hefted it in one hand, wrapping the other around Bruce’s still-very-warm back.

Once they’d stumbled out into a spot where they could just see Stark Tower stretching out between the other buildings, Bruce mumbled something in a voice so quiet that Tony had to strain to hear.

“Thanks.”

Tony gave a quick squeeze to the shoulder he was holding onto. “Any time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
